To-day, to-morrow through all time,

Oft as our hands can wield the sword; Fight shore with shore, fight sea with sea, Fight all that are or e'er shall be!"

[Dido Slays Herself with Eneas' Sword.]— (CRANCH.)

Dido, trembling, wild with brooding o'er

Her dread design, rolling her blood-shot eyes,

Her quivering cheeks suffused with spots, bursts through

The inner threshold of the house, and mounts

With frantic mien the lofty funeral pile,

Unsheathes the Trojan's sword-a gift not sought
For use like this-then, having gazed upon
The Ilian garments and the well-known bed,
She paused a little, full of tears and thoughts-
Threw herself on the couch, and these last words
Escaped: "Sweet relics, dear to me when fate
And heaven were kind, receive this life-blood now,
And free me from these sorrows! I have lived,
And have achieved the course that fortune gave.
And now of me the queenly shade shall pass
Beneath the earth. A city of high renown

I have founded, and have seen my walls ascend;
Avenged my husband; for my brother's crime
Requital seen; happy, too happy, alas,

Had the Dardanian fleet ne'er touched my shores!"
With that she pressed her face upon the couch;

"I shall die unavenged-yet, let me die!

Thus, thus 'tis joy to seek the shades below.

These flames the cruel Trojan on the sea
Shall drink in with his eyes, and bear away
Along with him the omens of my death!"

While thus she spoke, the attendants saw her fall
Upon the steel, and the sword frothed with blood,
That spurted on her hands. Loud clamor fills

The lofty halls. The rumor of the deed

Raves through the shaken city. Every house

Resounds with grief, and groans, and women's shrieks;
And all the air is filled with wailing tones;

As though all Carthage or the ancient Tyre
Were toppling down before their invading foes,
And over roofs and temples of the gods

The flames were rolling.

Breathless, terrified,

With trembling steps, her sister hears, and through
The crowd she rushes; with her nails she rends
Her face, and with her hands she beats her breast,
And calls upon the dying queen.

[The Pitiful Death of Dido, Destroyed by the Treachery of Venus.]-(MORRIS.)

* * * She reached the topmost stair, And to her breast the dying one she fondled, groaning

sore,

And with her raiments strove to staunch the black and

flowing gore.

Then Dido strove her heavy lids to lift, but back again They sank, and deep within the breast whispered the

deadly bane:

Three times on elbow struggling up a little did she rise, And thrice fell back upon the bed, and sought with

wandering eyes

The light of heaven aloft, and moaned when it was found at last.

*Then on her long-drawn agony did Juno pity cast, Her hard departing; Iris then she sent from heaven on high,

And bade her from the knitted limbs the struggling soul untie.

For since by fate she perished not, nor waited deathdoom given,

But hapless died before her day by sudden fury driven, Not yet the tress of yellow hair had Proserpine off

shred,

Nor unto Stygian Orcus yet had doomed her wandering head.

So Iris ran adown the sky on wings of saffron dew, And colors shifting thousand-fold against the sun she

drew,

And overhead she hung: "So bid, from off thee this

I bear,

Hallowed to Dis, and charge thee now from out thy body fare."

-(CONINGTON.)

*Then Juno, pitying her long pain,

And all that agony of death,

Sent Iris down to part in twain

The clinging limbs and struggling breath.

For, since she perished not by fate,

Nor fell by alien stroke reserved,
But rushed on death before her date,

By sudden spasm of frenzy nerved,
Not yet Proserpina had shred
The yellow ringlet from her head,
Nor stamped upon that pallid brow
The token of the powers below.
So down from Heaven fair Iris flies

On saffron wings impearled with dew

That flash against the sunlit skies

Full many a varied hue;

Then stands at Dido's head, and cries:

She spake and sheared the tress away; then failed the life-heat spent,

And forth away upon the wind the spirit of her went.

"This lock to Dis I bear away

And free you from your load of clay;"

So shears the lock; the vital heats
Disperse, and breath in air retreats.

-(CRANCH.)

Great Juno, then,

Pitying her lingering agony and death,
Sent Iris from Olympus down, to free
The struggling soul, and loose its mortal tie.
For since by fate she perished not, nor death
Deserved, but was made wretched ere her time,
And by a sudden madness fired, not yet
Proserpina had shorn the golden lock

From off her head, nor to the Stygian gloom
Condemned her. Therefore Iris, dewy soft,
Upon her saffron-colored pinions borne,
And flashing with a thousand varied hues
Caught from the opposing sun, flew down, and stood
Above her head, and said: "This lock I bear
Away, sacred to Dis; such my command-
And free thee from that body." Saying this,
She cuts the ringlet. And the vital heat
Exhales, and in the winds life floats away.